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Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole marks the animated debut of 300 and Dawn of the Dead filmmaker Zack Snyder, and it’s clear almost immediately that Snyder’s notoriously over-the-top visual sensibilities have survived the transition from live action to animation. The director’s reliance on his usual tricks, including slow-motion cinematography and starkly-framed compositions, actually work surprisingly well within the context of a computer-animated endeavor, as the animation team has crafted a film that contains some of the most jaw-dropping visuals this side of a Pixar project.

That being said, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole suffers from a convoluted and downright confusing storyline that prevents the viewer from connecting to the material and ultimately cancels out its positive attributes. The film, based on the first three of Kathryn Lasky’s Guardians of Ga’Hoole books, has clearly been designed to appeal to fans of the source material, as there’s simply never a point at which Snyder is able to entirely explain the rules of this fantastical world or what role the various characters play in it. As a result, the film remains hopelessly uninvolving for the duration of its overlong running time – with the big action-oriented finale hardly able to pack the kind of visceral punch that Snyder is clearly aiming for.

The Story

Soren (Jim Sturgess) is a young owl who enjoys a comfortable home life with his competitive brother (Ryan Kwanten’s Kludd), his adorable sister (Adrienne deFaria’s Eglantine), and his loving father (Hugo Weaving’s Noctus). Everything changes one fateful afternoon as Soren and Kludd accidentally fall to the ground far below their family home and are quickly snatched up by a pair of menacing (yet wisecracking) owls.

After a long flight across an ocean, the siblings find themselves held captive by a group of sinister owls known as The Pure Ones. The Pure Ones, led by Metalbeak (Joel Edgerton) and Nyra (Helen Mirren), quickly put Soren to work in a dank cavern (where he is to help cultivate a precious metal), while Kludd begins his training to become one of the malicious group’s soldiers.

Soren, along with new friend Gylfie (Emily Barclay), eventually manages to escape from The Pure Ones, and the pair embark on a journey to track down the mysterious (and possibly mythical) owls known as the Guardians of Ga’Hoole. Upon arriving at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, Soren and Gylfie quickly convince the Guardians, which includes Ezylryb (Geoffrey Rush) and Allomere (Sam Neill), that the Pure Ones are planning a deadly attack, and it’s not long before preparations are being made to stop the Pure Ones once and for all.

The Voice Cast

To Snyder’s credit, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole boasts a seriously impressive voice cast that almost compensates for the otherwise underwhelming nature of the proceedings. (Almost, but not quite.) Leading the pack is Jim Sturgess’ impressively subtle work as the film’s hero, as the relative newcomer does a nice job of capturing Soren’s transformation from a wide-eyed innocent to a hardened warrior. The supporting cast, which is essentially a who’s-who of Australian and British cinema, fares equally well, with Mirren’s deliciously evil turn as the vicious Nyra standing out as a highlight. It’s worth noting, however, that the heavy accents of the various performers does occasionally make it difficult to make out all of the dialogue, but this is a minor problem that is easy enough to overlook.

The Bottom Line

Though Snyder and his team deserve credit for trying something different within the animated realm – the movie is, after all, as far a cry from most kid-friendly animated endeavors as one could imagine – Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole is nevertheless a disappointing piece of work that’s destined to leave most viewers cold. Small children will find themselves growing impatient with the movie’s uneventful midsection, while adults are unlikely to embrace the poorly developed characters or relentlessly complicated storyline. It’s a shame, certainly, given the strength of the movie’s visuals and performances, although, to be fair, fans of the source material just might be willing to overlook the film’s many, many deficiencies.

Grade: C-

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole was directed by Zack Snyder and is rated PG for some sequences of scary action.

Theatrical Release Date: September 24, 2010

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